Spring is the season when the snow begins to melt and flowers begin to peek up from underneath the earth to catch a few rays of sunshine. Flowers also work their way into spring baking projects in the form of decorations, as well as a few edible flowers here and there. It’s easy to decorate a cake with a flower motif, but Wilton’s Mini Flower Pot Cake Pan actually lets you make the pot to “plant” in. The pan makes a half dozen flower pot-shaped cupcakes or muffins. Each is about twice the size of a standard cupcake, which gives you plenty of room to decorate it and allows it to be sturdy enough to support the weight of some edible cookie or chocolate flowers. The pan is lightweight and nonstick, which is a plus since it will be difficult to find muffin cups large enough to fit into the pan’s cavities. Instead, grease and flour your pan before using it to ensure that your pots slide out easily. Once they’ve cooled, you can frost them with a basic buttercream or royal icing, or you could even wrap them in fondant for an extra smooth surface.

I highly recommend chocolate cupcakes so they will look like dirt inside the finished pot and complete the spring look, but you can use any flavor cupcake. You can get the look of dirt (edible dirt, of course) by crumbling chocolate cake into crumbs or pulverizing chocolate wafer cookies into a coarse powder and topping the pot off with that before “planting” your flowers.